School sports seasons to change

Get ready for some big changes in high school sports in the state of Michigan starting next fall.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by the Michigan High School Athletic Association that its scheduling of sports seasons does not discriminate against girls.

The refusal to hear the case means that the long-anticipated switching of girls' basketball and volleyball seasons will take effect this coming fall. Girls' basketball will be played in the winter along with boys' basketball. Volleyball will move from winter to the fall.

"I think we've all been preparing for it," Dow High athletics director Dan McShannock said. "We've been building alternative schedules and working out those logistics. We have a lot of work yet to do, but it's kind of disappointing."

Golf and tennis schedules for both girls and boys will also be changed.

"I guess in some respects, it's a relief because now we can head in one direction," Midland High athletics director Bob Scurfield said. "The difficulty has been to plan for two scenarios and have two different schedules for the last few years."

Monday's decision ends a nine-year court battle between the MHSAA and the group Communities for Equity. The group, founded by Grand Rapids-area mothers Diane Madsen and Jay Roberts-Eveland, sued the MHSAA in 1998, saying that the current sports seasons prevent girls from getting scholarship opportunities at the collegiate level. Madsen has three daughters, and Roberts-Eveland has four.

Beaverton athletics director Roy Johnston has served as both the Beavers' boys' and girls' basketball coach. The switch, he says, is not a good one for girls' basketball.

"There's no doubt that this is the worst thing that has happened to high school girls' basketball," Johnston said. "If a college coach can go out and recruit in Michigan when their team isn't playing, that's a heck of an advantage. It's a similar thing for volleyball. It's just ridiculous, but what's done is done."

A lower court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2001. The case has been in the appeals process ever since.

"I knew somehow that it would go all the way to the Supreme Court," McShannock said. "Both parties strongly felt they were right. Unfortunately for the MHSAA and its member schools, the other side won.

"I think I'd feel better if they (the Supreme Court) looked at the case, reviewed it and made a decision. I'm disappointed that they didn't hear it and rule on it."

The switch of seasons will put a grind on not only scheduling, but also getting enough referees to officiate games.

"(Scheduling) officials is going to be a mess," McShannock said. "It really is. You're going to have officials that are accustomed to working two to three nights a week and spread it out from August to March. Now, in order to meet the demand of games, they'll work five or six nights a week in the winter. Their bodies won't be able to handle that, and some of them have told me that."

According to Scurfield, the Saginaw Valley League already has a schedule in place for the upcoming basketball season. Boys and girls will alternate schedules between Monday-Thursday and Tuesday-Friday dates.

"Our league decided to alternate the Friday night game," Scurfield said. "The girls will play on a Friday one week, and the boys the next week. The problem is going to be matching up with another league. If we play Carman-Ainsworth, their league might be doing something different. Some leagues are going to do varsity doubleheaders on the same night. The Saginaw Valley League wants to keep the JV and the varsity kids together."

According to Johnston, the Jack Pine Conference will have the same schedule in place for its basketball season as the SVL.

The Mid-State Activities Conference plans on playing its conference junior varsity games on Thursdays and having a varsity doubleheader on Fridays. Nonconference games will be played on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The girls' basketball season will begin a week before the boys' season and end a week earlier. The girls' state finals will be held the week before the boys' finals. Both finals will be at the Breslin Center at Michigan State University.

"I'm not surprised (by the outcome of the lawsuit)," Coleman AD Dave Mammel said. "We knew this was something that we had to prepare for. We've been talking as a league (MSAC) that this is something to take seriously, and contingency plans were already started."

The volleyball season will begin in late August and run through the state finals, which will likely take place the second week of November. Midland High coach Tim Zerull is familiar with fall prep volleyball, having coached in Ohio for 12 years.

"I'm excited about it," Zerull said. "I come from states where it's in the fall. It's something I'm used to. I use the fall volleyball season partly as an educational experience for the girls, being able to do a team bonding thing and go watch Northwood volleyball play, for example. You can't do that in the winter."

Zerull noted that most top-notch AAU and USA volleyball tournaments are played in the winter. So with the season change, Michigan volleyball players will now have a chance to compete in club volleyball in the winter and enhance their scholarship chances.

"I'm a purist," Zerull said. "Everyone else is playing volleyball in the fall. Let's play volleyball in the fall."

The other issue facing some of the smaller schools is gym time. Practice times for both boys and girls at the varsity, junior varsity and freshman levels will have to be scheduled.

"We'll have to worry about that," Johnston said. "It will all come out in the wash. We don't have any choice."

Mammel says his high school and middle school gyms will be stretched to the limit.

"It will be difficult," Mammel said. "We have six teams using two gyms, so it's going to eliminate outside groups coming in, which isn't good PR-wise. We have men's groups that come in Tuesday nights and use one of our gyms. The fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders have an after-school program in the evening. It will be difficult to squeeze them in now."

With recently-added auxiliary gyms at Midland, Dow and Bullock Creek, the challenge to accommodate practice times won't be as taxing.

Dow High girls' basketball coach Bob Wellman thinks the switch will have an adverse effect on the girls' game in more than one way.

"I think that the most difficult thing is going up against the boys in regards to getting spectators," Wellman said. "If they put the boys on two nights and the girls on two nights, I don't think fans will want to come and watch four games. It may limit the spectators that girls have.

"The other scenario is to do the varsity on the same night. But if they did that, (the girls) might be looked at as the JV game. I'm not real excited about that," Wellman said.

His other objection deals with the preseason conditioning of the players.

"(Up until now), we could go from summer workouts right into the season in the fall," Wellman said. "Now we have that big break (in the fall) where we lose that focus and conditioning. Volleyball had to deal with the break, so I understand. But as a basketball coach, I'm a little disappointed with it."